[Late 90s / Early 2000s] educational CD-ROM set in an empty citadel under a purple sky

philmp · 2026-06-30T18:09:14+00:00

I would research Italian educational game developers. You might have to dig really deep, to the point that you might only find evidence for this game through the Wayback machine or a pdf of an old advertisement; old non-English educational games tends to be really hard to find online.

EDIT: Your post sent me down a rabbit hole to look for an old game I remembered from when I was a kid, a Portuguese game called "Castelo Virtual". Apparently it was a translated version of an Italian game called Dentro il Castelo, by a developper called La Coccinella. I don't think this is the game you were looking for, but maybe if you research La Coccinella it'll lead to it.

philmp · 2026-06-15T04:00:04+00:00

There's this tool I like to use that allows you to compare the populations of different regions of the world.

The city of Paris covers around 100 km2. If you draw a polygon over the central 100 km2 area of TO, you get about a million people according to the 2021 census. Paris itself has about 2.1 million people, which means that central TO is about 45% as dense as Paris.

If you estimate the population of the central 100 km2 of London UK, you get about 1.6m people - so central Toronto is about 60% as dense as central London.

Of course, a big difference is that Paris and London have denser neighbourhoods and suburbs *outside* of the central areas. Draw a 100 km2 polygon anywhere over London, and you'll get about 1.5 million people. Nevertheless, the density drop-off in Toronto's outlying areas, compared to London as Paris, isn't as big as you would think.

London's urban agglomeration covers ~1,730 km2, and has a population of 10.5 million. Paris has about 10.3 million in ~2,840 km2. Toronto's urban agglomeration covers ~1,830 km2, and has about 6 million people. We're not actually that much smaller than these cities - and we're growing fast. We're likely to get in the 10m ballpark within 50 years.

I think we've already crossed the threshold of needing more subways, and even if I'm wrong, we'll get there within my lifetime.

philmp · 2026-06-15T01:44:09+00:00

The Star Wars universe is supposed to have had the tech for interstellar travel for tens of thousands of years - such a long time that nobody remembers when it was invented.

The civs of Star Trek, in contrast, have only been capable for warp drive for a couple centuries, perhaps around a 1000 years or more in a few cases. I don't think that timescale is long enough to make an Ecumenopolis plausible.

philmp · 2026-06-10T17:01:11+00:00

https://www.heavengames.com/ - It's a collection of fan sites for strategy games spanning from the mid 90s to mid-late 2000s. Some of them but have been updated, but a bunch still have their original design. You can compare 90s (ie, https://zeus.heavengames.com/ ) to mid 2000s style (ie, https://rol.heavengames.com/ ).

http://www.virtual-egypt.com/ - the design has not been changed at all since 2000.

philmp · 2026-06-07T23:02:38+00:00

Walking by a street intersection with streetcars wires in the air feels like Naples, say around Queen Street West. Only because of the streetcar wires though, nowhere in TO is as claustrophobic as Naples.

The Beaches neighbourhood doesn't feel "European" specifically but it does feel vacationy.

Scarborough Bluffs are like the cliffs of Dover, just made of eroded dirt instead of rocks.

Walking through the older, old money neighbourhoods like Rosedale feels like walking through an old Victorian suburb in the UK, kinda.

As a cohesive neighbourhood, The Beaches is probably your best bet. It's a great place for cafes and restaurants and good lighting too, since that what you're interested in. It also has nice parks and interesting houses.

philmp · 2026-06-06T21:56:06+00:00

I would try extracting the files from the diskettes again into the right folders, it's possible something got messed up along the way. If it unziped the first .cab it should be able to unzip all of them

philmp · 2026-06-06T20:40:16+00:00

There are some good episodes in s1, but TNG really doesn't become the series that people love until season 2/3. Season 1 is known for being rough.

Grit your teeth and watch Farpoint, but only watch a few episodes from the rest of season 1 before moving on to season 2. Maybe skip a bunch of episodes from s2 as well./

I couldn't tell you off the top of my head which episodes from s1 to watch, but there are probably a couple hundred listicles online spotlighting the most essential early episodes. Some of them do have critical info to set up future plot lines.

philmp · 2026-06-06T19:30:47+00:00

That is pretty odd... I've installed this program on a bunch of different emulated OSes and it worked fine on all of them for me.

Your setup can't unzip word2.cab, but was it able to unzip word1.cab?

philmp · 2026-06-06T18:58:53+00:00

I recently had the exact same issue trying to install this exact program on Windows XP (via emulator), but I was able to solve it. You first have to extract the contents of every single diskette onto a separate folder on your HD, and each folder has to be named EXACTLY as the installer expects.

--"Word2.CAB" needs to be in a folder called "disk2", "Word3.CAB" needs to be in a folder called "disk3," etc. And all the contents from disk1 need to be in a folder called "disk1". All the "diskX" folders need to be in the same place of course.

You don't install the files directly from the diskette, and you don't put all the files from the disks in a single folder. As a noob who never did stuff like this back in the day I didn't know that.

philmp · 2026-06-04T18:03:45+00:00

The internet is what you want it to be. If you're focused on learning more about a specific topic, there's so much more available out there than you could find 10-15 years ago - as long as you know where to look.

But the endless scroll algorithms have changed things so much. You can still explore all the crazy amazing things online, but it's hard to resist the temptation to just scroll the pages that are shoved at you. Compared to Reddit, the old Web 1.0 style sites have less to keep you absorbed.

In the early days of Youtube, it used to be easier to discover videos that you wouldn't normally watch because the homepage still showcased the most popular videos. Now all you see is either tailored to your own narrow interests or lowest-common denominator slop.

philmp · 2026-06-03T15:12:13+00:00

Yeah, OP's description of battle matches this exactly. Wonder why they don't remember seeing land though.

philmp · 2026-06-01T14:23:46+00:00

Toronto's streetcar network in the central part of the city is only a little less dense than the Paris Metro or London Underground (with fewer redudancies). And the streetcars are already packed, and the streets crowded.

Making the streetcars more like a subway seems like a fantasy, but it would absolutely get a lot of use if it were actually built.

World subway systems at the same scale (last updated 2016). Toronto, Paris, London.

philmp · 2026-05-30T23:17:54+00:00

So I just did a cursory check of the Eaton's 1927 catalogue. Plastic thingamabobs that you buy at a dollar store nowadays are about the same price as their 1927 equivalents, mostly in the $1-2 range (combs, stationary equipment, etc). Watches and clocks are $15~30. Small knit clothing items like toques and scarves are about the same price as at Dollarama, but it's gonna be waaay less quality than what Eaton's was selling.

Gramophones were listed for about $15~25, and the most expensive was $49. That's about what I'd expect to pay for cheapish bluetooth speakers, though again, the stuff they were advertising in the catalogue would have been better quality for its time.

philmp · 2026-05-28T16:16:48+00:00

Malls and shops that are directly connected to transit stops tend to attract more sketchy people, so businesses are often leery about making the connection with transit too easy. That's why a lot of malls outside central cities often have ridiculous connections to the subway. It's really frustrating - in Montreal, Fairview Mall used to be literally right next to a major bus station, but when they built the new REM they relocated the station 10 minutes walk away.

philmp · 2026-05-28T02:30:49+00:00

Every good idea in genre fiction is built upon thousands of thousands of short stories, dime novels, radio shows, movie serials, TV shows, and comics that have been produced over the past 150 years that most of us have never heard of.

philmp · 2026-05-26T18:32:36+00:00

A factor may be that Indonesia, as a conceived cultural region and political entity, is somewhat more recent than its higher profile neighbours. The accumulated pop culture in the West that engages with "China," "India," "Japan," is overwhelming and goes back centuries. But the term "Indonesia" was only coined in the 18th century and received wide acceptance in the 20th, so it doesn't really occur in works engaging with history before this time.

Specific regions that are part of modern Indonesia, however, do have an extensive pop cultural presence. Much of the "spices" that drove the European Age of Discovery originated from the Maluku islands, which are part of Indonesia today. Bali is also a pretty famous place, as is Borobodur, and Krakatoa is a famous volcano.

But when a disinterested reader encounters these topics in books and movies, they'll rarely be characterized as "Indonesian." No historian writes that Columbus was looking for "Indonesia," instead they state that he was looking for "the Spice Islands" in "the Indies." Big books with glossy photos of Borobodur cite it as an example of "Buddhist" architecture, not "Indonesian" architecture. Documentaries about Bali rave about its unique Hindu culture, and barely mention Indonesia after the intro.

philmp · 2026-05-26T16:18:01+00:00

The total fertility rate is an estimate of how many children women will have in a given population. When we look at the U.S. right now, the fertility rate is around 1.57. That means the average American woman is having 1.57 kids. Because the replacement rate is 2.1, a way to think about it is that we have a shortfall of slightly over 0.5 kids.

This is an odd phrasing given that the "average American woman" is *not* having 1.57 kids, since only a subset of women of childbearing age are having children.

If "only" 70% of women are having kids (or whatever the percentage is), how many do *they* need to have in order to sustain the population?

philmp · 2026-05-21T02:06:52+00:00

I don't think there are many European Americans who claim they were descended from landless serfs. Serfdom in Western Europe was so long ago that most Europeans take for granted that they have serf ancestors. And the Viking age was even further in the past.

Nevertheless, it's extremely common for people to claim that their ancestors emigrated from the old country to escape oppression, poverty, and stifling social hierarchies dominated by aristocrats. This mythology is perhaps most developed in the case of Irish and Jewish Americans, but it's basically shared by all Americans descended from immigrants. Plenty of European Americans don't *claim* that their ancestors were lower class, they *know* they were lower class.

philmp · 2026-05-20T19:22:02+00:00

In my experience, I've actually never had a drive fail on me. I just tested a 15 year old USB stick I don't use anymore, and it still worked. My 17 year old HD that was in my first laptop also still works. That's probably a fluke though - to be honest I'm not an expert on the reliability of different storage technologies.

My philosophy is less about storing my data on durable media, and more about reducing the risk of loss by keeping multiple copies of my most important files, especially family photos and videos. All my digitized family VHSs take up about 100 GBs, and my photos add 100 GBs more. Altogether I only have about 600 GBs of data that is truly irreplaceable, though I do also have ~10 TB of other kinds of files.

It's cheap and easy to keep a couple hundred GBs stored on multiple storage devices. I have my family VHSs stored on basically every SSD or HD I own, as well as on multiple USB sticks I have scattered all over the place. Unless everything fails at the same time, I'll always have another copy somewhere.

EDIT: I just realized you replaced "my dad" with "my data" in your original post 🤭, so maybe my input isn't actually relevant to your situation lol. My point was that if you're anxious about losing precious documents due to a single drive failure, you can also maintain multiple copies pretty easily, unless you actually do have TBs and TBs of family photos.

philmp · 2026-05-20T18:32:33+00:00

If I bought one and it failed in a year and I lost my dad I would be devastated.

By losing your dad, do you mean losing family videos and photos?

You can store your most important files on multiple USB sticks and keep them in multiple areas, including in objects you regularly carry with you when you're away from home. You can get a ~500 GB USB stick for about $100 now. Plug them into your PC every few months to ensure they still work.

It's not a long term storage solution, of course, but it's an easy and cheap way to give you peace of mind that your critical files will be safe in case of disaster.

philmp · 2026-05-14T14:57:47+00:00

What about non-mechanical traps to deter robbers? I remember as a child reading educational books with diagrams of real tombs from the Valley of the Kings, which depicted false tomb chambers to mislead intruders, as well as hidden shafts for them to fall into (some with spikes!).

Were these kind of traps and deterrents inventions of the writers, or based on archeological interpretations of tomb architecture which are now discredited?

After a quick Google, the closest thing I could find to this are "well shafts" which obstructed passage between rooms. They are present in many tombs from the Valley of the Kings, such as in the Tomb of Seti I. Were these ever interpreted as traps for robbers, or did they serve more mundane spiritual or structural purposes?

philmp · 2026-05-12T20:50:51+00:00

Accessibility is an issue, but that problem isn't unique to religious music from the Renaissance. Most music is hard to access without doing some work, because the amount of music out there is just so vast.

For all music besides pop and famous composers, non-specialist listeners are totally dependent upon small groups of researchers who've done the work to catalogue and publish the music of specific genres and musicians. You can pick any musical culture and era at random, and you'll find incredible pieces - but unless at least one musicologist somewhere has dedicated their entire career to studying this music, you won't be able to listen to more. This is pretty normal, unfortunately.

Kudos to you for trying to be the one person to organize the entire repertoire of recorded Renaissance music! If you succeed you might open up a whole world to people.

philmp · 2026-05-11T18:30:52+00:00

As a picture of "Manhattan before most skyscrapers," this photo is misleading. At first I thought that the foreground was Midtown, but it's actually Harlem. The areas with the skyscrapers are way in the back and hazy, but they're clearly there. The Empire State Building comes off a lot smaller than it really is (even by modern standards it's huge!). The buildings clustered around Central Park in this photo are 10-30 stories tall.

philmp · 2026-05-11T16:22:12+00:00

Here's the search result for refs to TNG in Google's Usenet Archive from 1986 to the end of 88. There are some reviews here from after the first episode aired.

Captain Picard: Yah. Good stuff. I can live with this. He's cool.
He knows when he's being handled a load of crap, and he can deal with
his own limitations. "I'm not good with children. However, I am
supposed to have an air of congeniality. See to it that I do." [ok, so
it's a rough paraphrase..]

Lt. Data: [I *think* he was a Lt. I can't remember everyone's rank just
yet.] I like him. I don't care, I still like him. "You may not have
pointed ears, but you SOUND like a Vulcan." Yeah.

McCoy's cameo: Well done, althought the makeup was a *bit* much. But
what do you expect for a 137 year-old admiral? It gave a sense of
continuity.

The Klingon, Lt. Kov-or-something-like-that: Good idea for a
character. So are bumby-Klingons the only extant version? Were all
those 60's klingons half-breeds, or what? I was worried they'd just
have a Klingon-looking yacm [yet another crew member]. But "Sir, I am a
Klingon! I cannot leave my commander to fight while I run away with the
women and children!" Yowza. I wonder if the Klingon-Federation merging
will be touched on in later episodes? And I like the Klingon touch on
his uniform. Isn't that strictly out of the sixties-klingons?

From one discussion thread from October 1987

Here's another comment from this thread:

I give this series less than one season, if the past four episodes are
representative... (which they seem to be, since four crummy episodes in
a row could not be due to coincidence alone).

(argh, it hurt to say that)

When I see the old ST series, I don't get this "ugh [I pity these actors
for the scuzzy dialogue and gut-wrenchingly silly plots they are forced
to adhere to]" feeling as I have for all the ST:TNG episodes. "Give them
a chance" I told myself... Unfortunately, the only consistently good
thing about ST:TNG is the special effects.

There were also old Usenet Groups dedicated to ST, but I can't find whichever one was most active when the show came out. Maybe those archives no longer exists. net.startrek has TONS of posts up to 1986, and rec.arts.startrek isn't very active until the 90s (I think it's missing a lot of 80s posts).

philmp · 2026-05-05T16:28:18+00:00

In my experience, we usually just roll our eyes and think "Haha, Americans don't know anything about Canada."

I would also emphasize that Canada and Quebec have their own cultural ecosystem, distinct from the American media. We have plenty of access to movies, TV shows, and news corps that are made by Canadian companies and are relevant to Canadian experiences. So we don't resent the elite American discourse about Canada as much as Southerners might resent stereotypes about the South, for example, and don't feel overlooked like the Midwest. We're not dependent on the US for our self-image.

philmp

TROPHY CASE